“I have acute pancreatitis.""I thought it was just average looking.”

“ 'Is that really the best you can say? An average-looking boy? An awful lot of boys are average-looking, S.Q.!' And poor S.Q., he just kept arguing that 'this boy was especially average-looking.' " ~ Kate Wetherall, The Mysterious Benedict Society”

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

“I'm an average person. Is just that I like reading.”

“He didn't move, just stood with a pleasant smile. But I wouldn't be fooled. How many times had I faces just like his on the news? Well, maybe not just like his. He was better looking than the average psychos.”

“After all, when I was in school, I thought I had a good time. It was only after I graduated and got out into the worlf that I realized how miserable I'd acutally been.”